Girl Scouts join fight over bridge name

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Lawmakers can expect face-toface meetings with Girl Scouts from across Georgia next month at the state Capitol, where the young scouts plan on treating legislators to amilk-and-cookie reception.

These girls bearing gifts of Thin Mints and Samoas will also come packing an agenda. They want to see Savannah’s towering suspension bridge renamed in honor of Juliette Gordon Low, who founded the Girl Scouts in the coastal Georgia city more than a century ago.

The Girl Scouts saw an opening last fall when Savannah’s city council formally asked state lawmakers during their 2018 session to strip the name of segregationist former Gov. Eugene Talmadge from the bridge. Georgia scouts are getting support from the Girl Scouts’ national headquarters in New York, which has hired a lobbyist to help sway lawmakers in Atlanta.

Rep. Ron Stephens, a Republican from Savannah, is on board with the switch. He said he plans to introduce a billon Feb. 6, when Girl Scout leaders plan to bring as many as300 scouts to the Capitol.

“I can’t think of a name that could go on the bridge at the Savannah River that would mean more,” Mr. Stephens said of Ms. Low, though he’s not optimistic fellow lawmakers will agree if that means rescinding an honor bestowed on a former governor. “My opinion is chances of passage are slim tonone.”

Since 1956, the span crossing the Savannah River at the Georgia-South Carolina line has been named for Mr. Talmadge, a populist Democrat who served three terms between 1933 and 1942. Mr. Talmadge railed against the New Deal for offering blacks hope of economic parity with whites. He defended whitesonly primary elections in Georgia. And he once proclaimed a black man’s place was “at the back door with his hat in his hand.”

In September, Savannah’s city council unanimously called on the legislature to take Mr. Talmadge’s name off the bridge.